Commandant to do LIVE town hall via Facebook

Commandant Gen. Jim Amos makes a point during an interview with Marine Corps Times in 2011. (Thomas Brown / Staff)

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos and Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Michael Barrett will conduct a live social media Q&A Friday, March 14 at 4 p.m. via the official Marine Corps Facebook page.

“An announcement post will hit the page and the bulk of dialogue will take place within the comments on that post. We will also be answering as many questions as we can on Twitter,” said Staff Sgt. Mark Fayloga, Marine Corps spokesperson, via email.

The Q&A thread will resemble the popular AMA format used on the site Reddit.com; commenters will post questions on the thread, the media team will select a question, repeat it with the user’s name tagged, and then answers deriving from either the commandant or sergeant major will contain their attribution.

Fayloga said a media team will be present with the commandant and sergeant major, and will field them the questions live as they happen.

“We can’t answer all the questions, of course,” explained Fayloga, “but there will also be some we can’t ignore.”

The town hall is part of Amos’ new found interest in engaging Marines directly via social media, in part because of the unpopular “Reawakening” initiative.

“It’s building on ‘Ask CMC; last time, we solicited for questions and then selected some of the ones we saw the most frequently, and the commandant answered them during a video interview.”

Such a format gave the staff time to not only screen questions, but formulate answers. A live format conceivably puts the Marines and commenters closer to asking the commandant directly.

“Answering in real-time will help reach more people, and those asking questions won’t have to wait and wonder if they’ll get a response.”

Is this where we can ask him to apologize to the nation for his treatment of our snipers, our justice system, Maj Weirick? etc? How about him explaining why he never called out the terrorists or hanging one of our own boys legs on the trees?

I hope they crush that loser. What a disgrace to Corps. Just another pathetic tool and puppet of D.C. Amos has shamed the highest post of the Corps and every Marine who has worn the uniform. He’s a fucking joke……… I hope someone at this so-called meeting has the balls to call his retarded ass out.